1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed generally to equipment capable of cutting a web into pieces of a predetermined length, and more particularly to a machine for automatically cutting long lengths of a dendritic silicon web into smaller pieces for further processing.
2. Background of the Invention
It is desirable to produce photovoltaic cells according to mass production techniques in order to achieve economies of scale. Currently, automated production of photovoltaic cells is carried out using silicon wafers which are round. The processing of such round wafers has lead to specialized equipment capable of manipulating, cutting, and storing such wafers. Unfortunately, such round wafers, when cut down into square or rectangular pieces, result in a large amount of waste. It is therefore desirable, in order to reduce waste and cut costs, to work with other shapes of single crystal silicon.
It is known that a single crystal dendritic silicon web can be grown up to lengths as long as seventeen meters. However, there is no equipment available for automatically processing such dendritic webs. Currently, the dendritic web must be manually cut to size using hand-held diamond tipped scribing tools. Such manual production techniques are not cost effective and do not provide for the accuracy and repeatability needed in order to produce a panel of photovoltaic cells. Therefore, there is a need for automated equipment capable of handling such dendritic webs.